Brazil Economy

• Brazil is the 5th largest population in the world with a population of 200 million people.
• Brazil recently edged past China to become the largest emerging market in the world (Morgan Stanley Capital Int’l Emerging Markets Index September 10, 2008)
• Newly discovered and massive off-shore oil fields led to an invitation for Brazil to become a member of OPEC
• In 2009 Wal-Mart will invest $1B in Brazil
• The famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson partnered with a leading Brazilian venture capital firm FIR Capital in Belo Horizonte with an initial capital contribution of $40M
• Brazil is an undisputed global leader in clean and renewable energies with a concentrated emhasis on BioFuels.

Brazil Internet Usage

• Google made Brazil their center for all South American and Latin American operations with most of its software development and engineering to be based in Belo Horizonte
• Brazil leads all of Latin America and South America in the number of Internet users, well ahead of both Mexico and Argentina
• Brazil is Google’s fastest growing market outside of the U.S. generating an estimated $500 million per year in revenues.
• Brazil has the second largest user base of Google Gmail e-mail accounts
• Brazil has the third largest number of broadband users in the Americas, behind only the U.S. and Canada. 
• Internet users in Brazil have doubled in each of the past three years
• 47% of Brazilian adult citizens have Internet access which represents 59 million Internet users over the age of 16 according to a March 2008 survey conducted by DataFolha and commissioned by F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi.  The survey also found that 53% of the people surveyed regularly post content on the Internet.
• The average Brazilian Internet users spends 30.2 hours online a month, substantially higher that Latin America (28.6 hours) and worldwide (25.7 hours)
• Internet penetration in Brazil based on population is 26.1% and expected to grow by more than 300% over the next 3-5 years.
• Brazil is the worldwide leader in online E-Government especially in the areas of e-participation, electronic voting, online tax filing and e-procurement.
• In 2007 more PC’s were sold in Brazil than TV sets

Brazil Mobile Usage

• Mobile phone subscribers grew at an astonishing rate of 21% in 2007
• Mobile subscriber penetration is 67% compared to 80% for the U.S.
• Mobile subscribers in Brazil outnumber fixed line subscribers by more than 3 to 1     
• Brazil is the 5th largest country for mobile phone penetration with China, U.S, Russia and India ahead of it.